so flagrant an encroachment on justice, liberty, the rights of conscience, and the claims of humanity. All rallied under the same banner, and cried out with one voice against the oppression which weighed them down, till, after many unsuccessful struggles, their voice was heard, their petitions heeded, and dissenting ministers and schoolmasters were allowed the privilege of prosecuting their peaceful avocations without violating their conscience by subscribing the thirty-nine articles, or subjecting themselves to a civil penalty by resisting so unholy a requisition. During this struggle for Christian freedom the above letters were written. Clothed in a language always sprightly, they were wellcalculated for popular effect; they enter largely into the chief points of the controversy, and, bating some defects of style, and perhaps occasional faults of sentiment, it will be rare to find a more ingenious vindication of the rights and privileges of Christian liberty. Robinson left Hauxton in 1773, and settled at Chesterton, within two miles of Cambridge. This brought him nearer to the centre of his charge, and the facilities for his literary pursuits were multiplied by his proximity to the university. But his income was not yet adequate to support a family of nine children, and he was compelled to look around him for other sources of emolument. He turned his attention to agriculture. By rigid economy, personal inspection of his affairs, judicious investments, and a spirit of enterprise that never slumbered, he found himself in a few years a thriving farmer, and had the joy to feel, that, by the blessing of Providence, his numerous family was beyond the grasp of want, and the caprice of fortune. Mr Dyer thus speaks of his character as a farmer and economist :-" It would be no less agreeable than instructive, to survey his rural economy and domestic arrangements in his new situation; the versatility of his genius was uncommon; and whether he was making a bargain, repairing a house, stocking a farm, giving directions to workmen, or assisting their labours, he was the same invariable man, displaying no less vigour in the execution of his plans, than ingenuity in their contrivance. The readiness with which he passed from literary pursuits to rural occupations, from rural occupations to domestic engagements, from domestic engagements to the forming of plans for dissenting ministers, to the settling of churches, to the solving of cases of conscience, to the removing of the difficulties of ignorant, or softening the asperities of quarrelsome brethren, was surprising." This is the language of one who lived near him and saw him often. About the year 1776 Robinson published his Plea for the Divinity of Christ.' This topic was now much agitated by reason of the late resignation of Lindsey and Jebb for scruples of conscience concerning the Trinity. Robinson's plea is drawn up with ingenuity, in a popular style and winning manner. Gilded offers were now made to him, if he would have the conscience to slide out of his errors, go up from the unseemly vale of poverty, and take his rest on the commanding eminence of church-preferment. To these overtures he was deaf; from his principles he could not be moved. When Dr Ogden said to him, in trying to unsettle his purpose, "Do the dissenters know the worth of the man?" he replied, "The man knows the worth of the dissenters." The Plea' was answered by Lindsey, but Robinson never replied; nor did he write any more in defence of the divinity of Christ. His sentiments about this time underwent a change. During the latter years of his life he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and believed in the subordinate nature of Christ. 6 In 1777 Robinson published a curious tract, entitled The History and Mystery of Good-Friday.' In this pamphlet he traces back the church holy-days to their origin, and proves them for the most part to have arisen out of heathen or Jewish practices, and to derive no authority from the Christian religion. It contains a severe and somewhat rough philippic against the church of England, which boasts of being reformed, and having cast off the abuses of the Romish church, while yet many are cherished as unwarrantable and pernicious as those severed from the old stock. This tract was exceedingly popular, and ran speedily through several editions. But the work which produced greater excitement than any of our author's writings, was a Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity,' published in 1778. Within a moderate compass it embraces all the points of controversy between the established church and the dissenters. Its manner is original and striking, the time of its appearance favourable to its currency and interest, for the dissenters' bill was then pending in parliament. In the house of lords this Plan of Lectures' was honourably mentioned by Lord Shelburne; and in the house of commons, Burke read passages from it, which he attempted to turn to the disadvantage of the petitioners. Fox repelled his attack, and foiled his attempt. Many articles were written against it, and among others, strictures by Mr Burgess, prebendary of Winchester. Robinson replied to none except the latter, on which he bestowed a few remarks in his preface to the fifth edition. The next literary enterprise of Robinson, was his translation of Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon.' To this essay the translator added a life of the author, remarks on the history of preaching, and a vast body of notes, making together two thick volumes. The notes are written in the author's peculiar manner, full of spirit and vivacity, and discover a prodigious extent of reading. Some of them are valuable, many are highly entertaining; but they seem to have been hastily thrown together, and collected with too little discrimination. They occasionally descend to trifling incidents, anecdotes, and inapposite reflections, equally offensive to good taste, and barren of instruction. Mr Robinson's celebrated volume of Village Sermons' was published in 1786. We have already observed that it was his custom to preach in the neighbouring villages, and frequently he tarried at a place. over night, and held religious services early in the morning, before the labourers were gone to their work. In summer these exercises were conducted in the open air, and fully attended. The above volume is composed of discourses delivered on these occasions, and written out afterwards as dictated by the author to an amanuensis. They had evidently been prepared with care in his own mind, and they contain a copiousness of language, a felicity of illustration, and readiness in quoting and applying appropriate passages of scripture, rarely to be witnessed. 6 The last works in which our author was engaged, were the History of Baptism,' and his Ecclesiastical Researches.' These were also his largest works, each making a closely printed quarto volume. It had long been a source of regret among the Baptists, that no full and authentic history of their brethren existed; and that their opinions, character, and progress, had never been represented to the world in the light they deserved. It was at length resolved by some of the leading members of this denomination to supply the deficiency, and appoint a suitable person to write a copious and accurate history. The general voice fixed on Robinson, and in 1781 he was invited by an authorized committee to undertake the task. He complied with the request, and immediately set himself about the gigantic labour of wading through the ecclesiastical records of ancient and modern times, appalled neither by the lumber of antiquity, nor the mountains of volumes which have been raised by the prolific industry of later ages. The History of Baptism' was chiefly printed before the author's death, but not published till after that event. It contains a vast fund of historical knowledge on the subject which he professed to treat, and indicates an uncommonly deep and patient examination. The Ecclesiastical Researches' was a posthumous work, and, having been left in an unfinished state, is in many respects imperfect. 6 During the last years of Robinson's life, his health and his intellect gave symptoms of a rapid decline. Of this he appeared to be fully aware; for to a friend, who visited him not long before his death, he said, "You are come to see only the shadow of Robert Robinson." In the spring of 1790, he engaged to preach charity sermons for the benefit of some schools at Birmingham. He left home on the 2d of June in a languid frame of body and mind; but so well did he bear the fatigue of the journey, that he preached twice on the following Sabbath. On Monday evening he was taken ill, and his friends were alarmed; but he gained strength the next day. He retired to rest late in the evening after eating his supper with a good appetite, but was found lifeless in his bed next morning. In 1807 Mr Flower published the Miscellaneous works of Robert Robinson,' in four volumes, to which he prefixed a brief memoir of the author's life and writings. This edition comprises all his works, except the History of Baptism,' Ecclesiastical Researches,' Village Sermons,' and Notes to Claude.' Among his best writings are the prefaces to the several volumes of Saurin. 6 He never Among the numerous excellencies of Robinson's style, there are some glaring faults. His imagination is brilliant and active, but it rambles without license, and luxuriates without moderation. wants an apposite figure to illustrate any position; but his choice is frequently ill-judged, and rests on low images unworthy of his subject. This may be accounted for, perhaps, from the circumstances of his education, and from his invariable habit of bringing down his language to the plain country people to whom he preached. Another fault is want of method and looseness of reasoning. This fault is not perpetual, but it occurs too often. Logic was not his strongest point; he loved not that his fancy should be clogged and hampered by the trammels of the schools; he chose a path of his own, and in his passion for freedom was impatient of the restraints which others have thought so wholesome a branch of discipline, and so useful in checking the exuberance of a prurient imagination, and maturing the decisions of a wayward judgment. It needs hardly be added that his taste partook of those defects; it is sometimes bad, and often not to be commended.1 Abridged from Memoir by Jared Sparks. John Wesley. BORN A. D. 1703.-DIED A. D. 1791. JOHN WESLEY, the founder of the religious body called Wesleyan Methodists, was born June 17th, 1703. His father, Samuel Wesley, was the son of a nonconformist minister, but studied for the church of England, and was appointed to the livings of Epworth and Wroote, in Lincolnshire. At the former of these places, John, the subject of the present sketch, was born. Both his parents seem to have been distinguished by moral and intellectual worth; in their characters a curious observer might, perhaps, be able to trace certain characteristic features of their son's mind. When six years old he was exposed to imminent peril by a fire which occurred in his father's house. During the bustle of the event, he was left neglected in the nursery, but, being seen from the outside, was taken out just before the falling in of the roof. This escape-a remarkable event in the life of a man who has exerted such an influence on society-he himself seems to have gratefully remembered through life; and-in allusion, it is supposed, to this deliverance, though, perhaps, also with a reference to his religious condition-beneath a portrait of him there was represented a house on fire, accompanied with the motto, "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" At the end of 1715, another and somewhat different kind of domestic alarm occurred in his father's family. This arose from certain noises and appearances by which it seems even the venerable divine and his wife were induced to believe that some supernatural visitant had taken up quarters in their house. John was at this time absent at school; but it may easily be conceived that the circumstances would produce an effect on his mind; and in a narrative which he published in the Arminian Magazine,' he enters into the particulars of the affair, premising, that when he was very young he heard several letters read, giving an account of strange disturbances in his father's house at Epworth in Lincolnshire; and that when he went down thither in the year 1720, he "carefully inquired into the particulars,"-" spoke to each of the persons who were then in the house, and took down what each could testify of his or her own knowledge." 1 At the Charter-house, young Wesley seems to have recommended himself to the master by his proper conduct; and although he appears to have suffered much, when there, from older boys, yet he was accustomed, in later life, to visit the scene where he had spent so many of his earlier days. Even in boyhood, however, according to his own declaration at a later period of his life, his mind was restless and uncomfortable. "I distinctly remember," says he, "that even in my childhood, even when I was at school, I have often said, They say the life of a school-boy is the happiest in the world, but I am sure I am not Perhaps it was also in this double reference that, in prospect of a fatal issue to an illness with which he was attacked, he composed for himself the following epitaph: "Here lieth the body of John Wesley, a brand plucked out of the burning, who died of a consumption, in the fifty-first year of his age, not leaving, after his debts are paid, ten pounds behind him," &c. happy, for I am not content, and so cannot be happy." When seventeen years of age, he removed to Christ church, Oxford, where, although of cheerful and lively manners, he prosecuted his studies with diligence. Previously to taking orders, he corresponded with his parents on certain topics of religion, among others the doctrine of predestination, a point so apt to excite the speculation and perplex the mind of a young academic inquirer; and to those well-known practical works, Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ,' and Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying,' he seems to have paid particular attention at this period of his life. At length, in the autumn of 1725, he was ordained by Dr Potter, bishop of Oxford. In spite of ridicule on account of his religious strictness, he was elected fellow of Lincoln college in the spring of the following year. "Entering now," says he, "into a new world, I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance, but by choice, and to choose such only as I had reason to believe would help me on my way to heaven. In consequence of this, I narrowly observed the temper and behaviour of all that visited me. I saw no reason to think that the greater part of these truly loved or feared God. Such acquaintance, therefore, I did not choose; I could not expect they would do me any good. Therefore, when any of these came, I behaved as courteously as I could; but to the question, When will you come to see me? I returned no answer. When they had come a few times, and found I still declined returning the visit, I saw them no more." At this time he also began to keep a diary. Within a year after his election, he was chosen moderator of the classes, and Greek lecturer; and we find him at this time laying down a plan of study, comprehending not only divinity, but also classics, logic, metaphysics, morals, Hebrew, Arabic, natural philosophy, poetry, and oratory. He also devoted some attention to the study of mathematics; in allusion to which, however, he says, in a letter to his mother, "I think, with you, that there are many truths it is not worth while to know. Curiosity might be a plea for spending some time upon them, if we had half-a-dozen centuries of lives to come; but it is ill husbandry to spend much of the small pittance now allowed us, in what makes us neither a quick nor a sure return." Soon after this appointment he left Oxford and settled at Wroote as curate to his aged father, in which situation he received priest's orders from Bishop Potter. In two years from the time of entering on his parochial cure, he returned to Oxford, where he acted as moderator at disputations held in the hall of his college. Finding at the university an association of young men devoted to religious pursuits, one of whom was his younger brother Charles-afterwards distinguished as his associate in the cause of Methodism-he became leader of the little society; and he followed as a religious adviser William Law, 2 2 It seems to have been from the circumstance of a young man at Christ church remarking in reference to this association, as similar to an ancient sect of methodical physicians" Here is a new set of Methodists sprung up," that this name became characteristic of Mr Wesley's followers. This little society was the nucleus of the two numerous bodies now called the Wesleyan and Calvinistic Methodists, and intimately connected with the great revival of religion which took place in the last century. John Wesley's account is as follows: "In November, 1729, four young gentlemen of Oxford, Mr John Wesley, fellow of Lincoln college; Mr Charles Wesley, student of Christ church; Mr Morgan, commoner of Christ church; and Mr Kirkham, of Merton college, began to spend some evenings in a week together, in reading chiefly the Greek Mr |